I remember a Vulcan "incident" in the USA when I was on Britannias at Lyneham in the 1970's. A Brit had flown out with Vulcan groundcrew/spares and equipment to support a bombing detachment in the southern USA. On the way back the almost empty Brit received a message that a pressurisation test machine had been found to be broken and there could be loose mercury in the Brit. The Flight Engineer made a check and found loose mercury in the floor rails and seat mounting holes. They diverted to Montreal and called Upavon for help. I was called out from standby and flew an empty Brit to Montreal together with a couple of technicians. The other crew then flew our aircraft back home and we stayed to fix the mercury problem. The next day we all went down to Montreal market, bought several containers of flowers of sulphur and a big pack of glass pipettes then headed for the aircraft. Using the whole crew with the two technicians we managed to remove almost all the mercury. Upavon suggested we wore oxygen masks for the return flight, but that would prove difficult, so we set off for Lyneham, minus masks, three days after our arrival in Montreal. It turned out to be a very expensive breakage of glass!
Last edited by brakedwell; 21st Nov 2022 at 15:10.